China allows iTunes back in after “Songs” censorship

China has allowed its citizens access to the iTunes store again now that the album Songs for Tibet – The Art of Peace has been blocked. Any attempts by people in China to access the album will result in an error -and not just in iTunes.

You can’t get the tracks from Amazon or YouTube either.

The album was a source of controversy because the company behind it was giving away copies to Olympians during the Beijing Games. This type of censorship is very common in China, and unfortunately, many of our larger companies have proven more than willing to work with China in censoring the material so they can do business in the country.

Comments

Apple has done the appropriate thing. To think that we in the U.S. don’t sensor is ridiculous. Just look at how movies are butchered when shown on TV, even on some cable channels now. We can’t even control “censorship” in our own country, let alone others. Chinese should have access to iTunes, and the only alternative solution was to keep the album accessible, and thus prevent the Chinese from using anything on iTunes – that would be a worse form of “censorship”.

Individual stations and/or the FCC censoring for content in a particular timeframe/etc… due to potential children watching is a lot different than the federal government banning something because it doesn’t fit with their politics. Imagine the US government restricting access to “Bowling for Columbine” or “An Inconvenient Truth” simply because they didn’t agree with the premise. And not only restricting access to it, but penalizing and limiting anyone or anything that possibly gave you access to it.

US Censorship…editing out cursewords, sex, and violence in certain settings where children may have access.

Chinese Censorship… Denying the existence of things they don’t agree with, imprisoning reporters, penalizing corporations who want to do business in China, etc…